Will America and China Heed the Warnings of Twentieth-Century Catastrophe? (Odd Arne Westad)
In The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914, the British historian Paul Kennedy explained how two traditionally friendly peoples ended up in a downward spiral of mutual hostility that led to World War I. Major structural forces drove the competition between Germany and Britain: economic imperatives, geography, and ideology. Germany’s rapid economic rise shifted the balance of power and enabled Berlin to expand its strategic reach. Some of this expansion—especially at sea—took place in areas in which Britain had profound and established strategic interests. The two powers increasingly viewed each other as ideological opposites, wildly exaggerating their differences. The Germans caricatured the British as moneygrubbing exploiters of the world, and the British portrayed the Germans as authoritarian malefactors bent on expansion and repression.
The two countries appeared to be on a collision course, destined for war. But it wasn’t structural pressures, important as they were, that sparked World War I. War broke out thanks to the contingent decisions of individuals and a profound lack of imagination on both sides. To be sure, war was always likely. But it was unavoidable only if one subscribes to the deeply ahistorical view that compromise between Germany and Britain was impossible.
The war might not have come to pass had Germany’s leaders after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck not been so brazen about altering the naval balance of power. Germany celebrated its dominance in Europe and insisted on its rights as a great power, dismissing concerns about rules and norms of international behavior. That posture alarmed other countries, not just Britain. And it was difficult for Germany to claim, as it did, that it wanted to make a new, more just and inclusive world order while it threatened its neighbors and allied with a decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire that was hard at work denying the national aspirations of the peoples on its borders.